Did anyone fly Legend Airlines before they ceased operations? How were they? I know they had their own renovated terminal in DAL, and they seemed to be going for the Midwest Express type level. DC-9's with about 80 leather seats and TV's at every seat. I think what did them in is their expenses. Being ran by the former head of the FAA, you would think he might know better. Just go on ebay, and you can still find things from them that were not needed for a startup that needed to build capitol first. They had silverware and dining dishes with the Legend logo on them, note pads, plastic kiddie wings, lots of things that can be held of while you wait to make money. Given the fact you just renovated these planes and an entire terminal, you probably almost blow your entire invested capitol right there.

Has anyone moved into their terminal in DAL, or is it just locked up for now?

I didn't get a chance to fly them before they closed their doors, but what I do know is that they had it very difficult from Day 1. AA made Legend's life hell from the get go with different legal tactics to keep them from flying. When AA realized that they were not going to be able to stop them, they set up their own DAL operation. AA outfitted several of their Fokker F100's with a 65 seat, all first class layout to directly compete with Legend. Even though it was a money-pit, AA stuck with it until Legend was done, then quickly pulled out of DAL and reconfigured the F100's back to their original layout. The Wright Amendment states that no airline with more than 65 seats (I believe) can operate out of DAL with out a stop in one of the surrounding borders states of Texas. That's the rule that stops WN from further expanding out of DAL. The loophole is that 65 seats or less, you have free range of the country out of DAL, that's what Legend tried to do.

Legend was a fun airline with cheap fares. $170 RT DAL-LAX. Great service, comfortable terminal, great guy running the airline, just wasn't able to make it work because of legal fees/building own terminal/AA. Too bad. Still have a business card of T Allan's and some napkins or something like that. Their logos and other stuff is still up at their executive terminal at Lemmon and University. Currently owned by Signature, I think. Thanks for reminding me, I'm gonna go over there later this week and try to take a look around inside there

They had a nice terminal and the product was fine. But too costly for LAS service, and of course AA really killed them. I toured their back office and it was funny being from a large airline, seeing one cubicle as "inflight" and the next cubicle as "accounting" and the next cubicle as "adversting" and so forth. It was all basically in one room. The employees were very eager to make it work, I'm sure many of them would have gone without pay for awhile if they had the chance.

Do a search in the trip report forum- I made one in October of 2000.
One word answer?
Incredible.
Great food, the FIRST airline with PTV's for free in coach... on small planes, anyway. Legend's PTV's came before JetBlue's or Frontier's.
I will never forget Legend.
I am still writing on post-it-notes that I bought at their auction.
Too sad.

Why don't you see if they have any extra Legend signage or whatever that they could give you. Then just sell those puppies on ebay and make a pretty penny. lol I was able to buy a 4 inch post it type notepad and that thing has paid for itself. It's like it does not stop providing paper. I use it over and over and it doesn't seem to get any smaller. I could really go for some Legend wall signage or other signature signs.

I didn't fly them, but I spent "some time" in their DAL terminal as ASA operated their DAL flights from there.
I got to go on a few of their aircraft though and it was really nice. Their terminal resembled the Marine Air Terminal in LGA (although newer and nicer). You had magazines, newspapers, coffee and stuff to get. For some reason they had some samples of their seats in the terminal. I found that odd as most folks in the terminal were flying them. They coordinated their schedules so that the eastbound flights could connect to the west and vice versa. So their planes only made it in 2 or 3 times a day. I wish they went to ATL so I could take their DC9's as opposed to EVRJ's. At least for the brief time I was there.
BTW they were nice to DL employees and you could fly for free if you ever took EV to DAL to connect to LAS or LAX (hell or even IAD).

It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.

I flew them once, DAL-LAX return. As noted, a stunningly good experience. They were doomed by the amount of their substantial start-up capital which had to be committed to fighting legal battles in order to simply get permission to fly from DAL. AA's predatory service at DAL was icing on that cake.

I still contend that the model could work exceptionally well in the post-9/11 era; it was almost like flying in a private charter, and the sense of security was very good.

Actually, the Legend Executive Terminal has been renamed the Love Field Executive Terminal and all exterior signage has been removed. It is still owned by Love Field Terminal Partners and the gates are part of the DAL Master Plan that was revised 2 years ago. Under the plan, the number of gates at the airport is capped at something like 55 or so. Anyway, because of the revised master plan, the old Braniff terminal and the TI gates were demolished. Too bad to. But the only occupant of the old Legend space is a limo company, they occupy the old res center. I went by a few weeks ago and the ticket counter sign is still up in the main terminal. It looks just like the day we shut down.

Also, I doubt Legend would have made it past 9/11. Even if they had made it to that point, I doubt the cash reserves would have been adequate enough to restart the airline days after the FAA shut the system down. But, the loads were extremely high during the last 3 weeks of operation. In fact, the Thanksgiving weekend in 2000, brought the first oversold flight for Legend. People were amazed that Legend was competitively priced. Legend catered to the business traveler obviously. Many times I sold a one-way ticket to LAX from DAL for $1200.00. And the traveler always commented on how he/she liked not being stuck in a middle seat in coach on the evil empire for the same amount of money.

Did you know that Legend was one of the first airlines to have LiveTV certified for aircraft? As I recall, we beat JetBlue by weeks. Of course, they held off to perfect the system. We went ahead and offered the service from day one, but ran into numerous technical problems. Also, Legend was one of the first airlines to be certified under the CSET standards introduced by the FAA in the 90's.

After the shutdown, I was holding out that maybe some former airline guro like Freddie Laker or Donald Burr would restart the airline and keep flying. But within a year, I think i remember seeing their planes in storage and one already starting to be scrapped.

I must say, it appeared to be an exceptional operation. I don't remember ever seeing anything on them that looked bad(although the brown leather interior could have used better color). The beige and black coloring was beautiful, as was the Legend name and star logo, and the logo looked as if it was made to fit on the DC-9's.

But like I said, I think T Allen spent way too much money on the small things while not paying attention to the big picture. I was hoping to check out their terminal before they closed up.

By the way, the signage may be down, but I'm sure a lot of it is just shoved into a closet somewhere. Find it, find it, find it. lol